As an astute student of soul, Jasmine Rose Wilson has identified a common thread tying together all the different permutations of the music. The 31-year-old singer—aka Baby Rose—knows that soul is all about pining for something that’s just out of reach, whether it’s a lover, a memory, or a dream. On YEARNALISM, her third album and second for Secretly Canadian, Baby Rose tests her hypothesis as she chronicles the permutations of desire. It’s a twofold project. Each song explores a different kind of longing—lovers come together but fall apart, dreams fade away only to have resolutions renewed—against a different strain of soul. The trick to YEARNALISM is that Baby Rose isn’t a dispassionate reporter, documenting the details of a plot. She places herself at the center of the story.
Deep feeling comes easily to Baby Rose, a vocalist of uncommon power and nuance. The depth of her gift was evident on her 2017 mixtape From Dusk ’til Dawn and 2019’s To Myself, her major-label debut. But Island couldn’t figure out how to market To Myself to a wider audience, highlighting a conundrum that often faces musicians raised on old records: It can be hard to figure out how to fit them into the present. Rose’s solution to the problem was to go indie. She moved to Secretly Canadian for Through and Through, where she expanded her palette but stuck to the principles of the genre; underneath its gleaming veneer, it remained a classic soul album in form and intent.
Baby Rose retains her retro sensibility on YEARNALISM—she’s depicted on the album cover holding a refurbished vintage microphone, after all—but at the same time, she’s audibly building upon tradition, using the studio as an instrument to shape old sounds into something fresh. The past is still present throughout, sometimes surfacing in very particular ways. “But, NVM” expertly evokes the soft breeze of ’70s pop-soul, “All My Love” captures the bright pulse of prime disco, and “Is This Love,” a duet with Elmiene, is a sumptuous Philly soul ballad. That song has a counterpart in the slow-burning “Friends Again,” a collaboration with Leon Thomas pitched halfway between deep soul and quiet storm.
Thomas’ appearance is a reminder of Rose’s own role on his Mutt, the album that won the Grammy for Best R&B Album earlier this year. Her alliance with Thomas shows that she has one foot in the pop mainstream, but another of her previous collaborations had a deeper influence on YEARNALISM: In many respects, it feels like a continuation of Slow Burn, her 2024 EP with BADBADNOTGOOD. There, the alt-jazz group and the singer painted on a wide canvas, letting open space and echo color the music. A similar aesthetic is apparent in this album’s arrangements, which are full of nuance, texture, and air.
With its spectral harmonies and simple strummed guitar, “When I’m Gone” opens the record on a slightly eerie note, and the best moments follow through on its skewed perspective. “Believe Me” decorates a lilting rhythm with psychedelic Mellotron, and “Sunday” builds from a sighing, hungover strum to a kaleidoscopic denouement colored by vivid fuzz guitar carried over from the steely “Dressed in Metal.” Underneath the shapeshifting arrangements, the songs are lean, elegant constructions that allow Rose to show a full range of feeling. Her elongated phrasing counters the pulsating neon beat of “Let Me Go”; her sigh settles into the stylishly wistful “But, NVM.” And with its graceful interplay of keyboards and strings, “Jasmine’s Sonnet” grants Baby Rose the space to sound both tender and tough—a blend of contrasting emotions that exemplifies YEARNALISM’s understated power.
